This research is to synthesize studies that are related with old adults life satisfaction and psychological, social adjustment by meta-analysis. Also the research is to verify whether there have differences in effect sizes depending on the moderator variables(form of theses, date of publication, sex, occupation, experience of volunteer work, participation method, type of idioadaptation). Through the results of the analysis, this study offers a guidance for follow-up studies that are related with old adults life satisfaction. Moreover, the ultimate purpose of this paper is to improve the quality of life by analyzing variables which improve or degrade the relation between old adults life satisfaction and psychological, social adjustment.
For the analysis, the study collected 140 master’s theses and doctoral dissertations, and 169 academic journals; total 309 studies written in Korea. However, 79 studies which are absent of related variables and 2 of overlapping publications were excluded. Additionally, 109 studies that do not have necessary quantitative data(correlation coefficient) for measuring the effect size and 4 studies which contain the data that is far beyond the normal measurement were excluded as well. Ultimately, among the 115 studies that are about the relation between psychological, social adjustment and life satisfaction, 82 studies were examined for positive adjustment and 59 papers for negative adjustment.
The results of this study are as follows:
First, the effect size of positive emotion within the total effect size of the relation between life satisfaction and psychological, social adjustment is .460 and it indicates high degree of correlation according to Cohen’s coefficient(Cohen, 1988). On the other hand, the effect size of negative emotion is -.362 and it indicates low degree of correlation. Aforementioned results verify that positive emotion exerts meaningful influence on life satisfaction within the relation between old adult life satisfaction and psychological, social adjustment. As it means that positive emotion of old adults show higher relation with life satisfaction than any other factors, through the analysis results this paper raise the necessity that senior policy should focus on improving the positive emotion of old adults.
Second, the effect size of the relation between old adults life satisfaction and psychological, social adjustment turned out to show difference depending on the moderator variables which are the form of theses, date of publication, sex, occupation, experience of volunteer work, participation method, type of idioadaptation. Especially, within the positive adjustment, subjective well-being’s effect size was highest among the idioadaptation variables and within the negative adjustment, death anxiety’s effect size was lowest among the idioadaptation variables.
In conclusion, the research result provides the ground of base line date which can be used for establishing model to the follow-up researchers who study old adult life satisfaction related variables. Although the variables were limited due to the absence of meta-analysis about the relation between old adult life satisfaction and psychological and social adjustment in the precedent studies, this research combined, analyzed the research results and then presented further result. Therefore the findings of this research has profound significance.